Ville Kivimäki

Sodan särkemä arki

Tiina Kinnunen

Drawing on innovative scholarship on Finland in World War II, this volume offers a comprehensive narrative of politics and combat, well-argued analyses of the ideological, social and cultural aspects of a society at war, and novel interpretations of the memory of war.

History, Memory, Interpretations

Finland in World War II

Tieto-Finlandian voittanut teos purkaa rohkeasti sankaruuden ylle sälytettyjä myyttejä sekä sukupolvia vaivanneita kansallisia traumoja. Aseiden vaiettua moni veteraani heräsi öisiin painajaisiinsa. Mitä he olivat saaneet kärsiä? Kuinka mielenterveys oli mahdollista säilyttää tilanteissa, joissa sietokyvyn rajat tulivat vastaan? Mitä tapahtui, kun tuo raja ylittyi? Sotiemme vaiheet tunnetaan jo lähes perin pohjin, mutta sodan tunnehistorian kartoitustyö on yhä kesken. Tärkeän tutkimusalueen merkkipaaluksi muodostuva Murtuneet mielet purkaa rohkeasti sankaruuden ylle sälytettyjä myyttejä sekä sukupolvia vaivanneita kansallisia traumoja. Ville Kivimäen kartoittaa teoksessa rintamamiesten psyykkisen kestämisen ja murtumisen syitä ja vaihtelua toisen maailmansodan eri vaiheissa. Keitä aikalaistermein "tärähtäneet" sotilaat olivat? Miksi heihin suhtauduttiin niin toisin kuin muihin sodassa haavoittuneisiin? Henkisesti murtuneiden sotilaiden hoitomuodot - työterapiasta sähköshokkeihin - sekä sodan aikana vallalla olleet sotapsykiatriset opit tulevat myös käsitellyiksi. Nuoren historiantutkijasukupolvemme ehdotonta kärkeä edustava tutkija Ville Kivimäki (s. 1976) on ollut toimittamassa ja kirjoittamassa mm. aihetta sivuavia Ihminen sodassa, Ruma sota ja Finland in World War II -teoksia. Murtuneet mielet perustuu Kivimäen laajaa kiinnostusta herättäneeseen väitöskirjaan.

Taistelu suomalaissotilaiden hermoista 1939-1945

Murtuneet mielet

Petri Karonen

In most European countries, the horrific legacy of 1939-1945 has made it difficult to remember the war with much glory. Despite the Anglo-American memory narrative of saving democracy from totalitarianism and the Soviet epic of the Great Patriotic War, the fundamental experience of war for many Europeans was that of immense personal losses and often meaningless hardships. The volume at hand focuses on these histories between the victors: on the cases of Hungary, Estonia, Poland, Austria, Finland, and Germany and on the respective, often gendered experiences of defeat. The chapters underline the asynchronous transition to peace in individual experiences, when compared to the smoother timelines of national and international historiographies. Instead of a linear chronology, both personal and collective histories tend to return back to the moments of violence and loss, thus forming continuous cycles of remembrance and forgetting. Several of the contributors also pay attention to the constructed and contested nature of national histories in these cycles. The role of these "in-between" countries - and even more their peoples', multifaceted experiences - adds to the widening comparative European history of the aftermath, thereby challenging the conventional dichotomies and periodisations in national historiographies. In the aftermath of the 70th anniversary of 1945, it is still, unfortunately, too early to regard the post-war period as mere history; the memory politics and rhetoric of the Second World War and its aftermath are still being used and abused to serve contemporary power politics in Europe.

Post-war Europe between the Victors after the Second World War

Continued Violence and Troublesome Pasts

Tanja Vahtikari

Sami Suodenjoki

This open access book uses Finland in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as an empirical case in order to study the emergence, shaping and renewal of a nation through histories of experience and emotions. It revolves around the following questions: What kinds of experiences have engendered national mobilization and feelings of national belonging? How have political and societal conflicts turned into new communities of experience and emotion? What kinds of experiences have been integrated into, or excluded from, the national context in different instances? How have people internalized or contested the nation as a context for their personal, family and minority-group experiences? In what ways has the nation entered and affected people’s intimate spheres of life? How have “national” experiences been transmitted to children in the renewal of the nation? This edited collection points to the histories of experience and emotions as a novel way of studying nations and nationalism. Building on current debates in nationalism studies, it offers a theoretical framework for analyzing the historical construction of “lived nations,” and introduces a number of new methodological approaches to understand the experiences of the nation, extending from the investigation of personal reminiscences and music records to the study of dreams and children’s drawings.

Ville Kivimäki

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